It’s a Beautiful Day — Sky Falls, You Feel Like
It’s a beautiful day, don’t let it get away…
I am completely in love with Ireland! The rooms and facilities in this hostel leave something to be desired but once we leave, it’s been super! I didn’t have an internet adventure yesterday really so I should say Happy Mother’s Day, mommy!! And happy birthday, my brother!
Yesterday, Sunday, we all got up pretty early and leaped out of the hostel around 9am, snarking about how the rest of our entire dorm was still sleeping. Way to waste your Ireland stay, girls! Well as it turns out… they had the right idea. Nothing we wanted to see opened until noon so we went to tons of gift shops and walked around everywhere for quite some time. When things did open, we went to Christ Church where I lit a candle to pray for peace in Ireland. Then we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. It was fabulous! They said they knew from some typographical errors that it probably wasn’t intended for everyday use but rather for special occasions. Well I didn’t find any of the errors but it’s not in English so I suppose that is why! After that we went to the Queen of Tarts for so delicious raspberry cheesecake tarts. Oh man they were amazing.
Then we went to Dublin Castle where we went on a really great guided tour. The guide with a so cute Irish accent was all funny and told great stories. It’s cool, guided tours are boring sometimes but this one was so great, she showed us tons of little details and things I never would have noticed.
In the evening we went to a little pub by the hostel, The Big Tree pub.There was live music, just a girl singing with a guitar but she was so good! So I listened to live music in an Irish pub and Mark and Kim had a Guinness and there was soccer on all the TVs, I felt quite European!
Today was probably the coolest day on the trip for me so far. We saw brochures for “The Celtic Experience”, a bus tour, and thought it looked cool. So today we were standing at the place where buses were pulling up and getting people and taking off, and this scary black van with “Mystery Tour” written in classic horror movie font and question marks everywhere pulls up. “I’d never get on that thing, I’m glad it’s not ours!” I announce, seconds before the driver steps out and lilts, “alright, who am I getting here? Five booked under Aleksandra!” I just died of the irony.
The driver (Paul) was really, really funny though. The van only seated 14 including him so it was good. All while we were driving we listened to U2 and Snow Patrol (apparently Irish!) and drinking songs and Riverdance. It was so great. Rocketing down the narrow Irish country roads, I had that great rebellious thought, “Wow, my mom would just die if she knew how fast we were going right now!”
We first went to the Valley of the Kings, a tomb older than the pyramids and we actually went inside and it was so tiny! Then we went to an old ruined monastery which we walked around, and then to more castles graveyards and pastures and a bar and gift shops… really it sounds pretty par but once you see my pictures, you will understand that it was pretty much the coolest thing ever!! We could even climb up the remaining staircases in the ruins, so fun. It was raining on and off all day, some times the sun was still shining despite the rain, seriously the pictures from today are going to be sweet, I can’t wait.
Tomorrow’s our last day in Ireland and then we’re catching a late-ish flight to Scotland.
